#druids

Druidical Circle. Mona the druidess or, The astral science of old Britain. 1904.

The rules for vanilla D&D druids with their prohibition against wearing metal armor is a bit strange when you consider that, throughout much of history (at least in Europe), both iron and the art of smithing itself was believed to be Old magic. It's the reason that horseshoes are considered lucky today and there are so many legends about supernatural creatures like fae being repelled by iron. It's not just the metal itself, it's that a person was able to take raw iron from the earth and shape it into something else.

There are old superstitions, particularly in Ireland, where a smith can curse someone if they turn the horn of their anvil eastward. There are even stories about communities gathering around a blacksmith's anvil to prevent a family from being evicted by trying to collectively curse the landlord.

So that detail of Taisha not just being able to speak to animals and plants like a traditional D&D druid, but can also speak to metal aligns so well with old-world beliefs. Why would druids not like metal? What is more natural that something that comes from the very earth? Imagine how terrifyingly amazing smiths the Lloy family must be, if they can talk to the metal while they shape it. How they can do it without even needing fire. It's no wonder they were the ones that made the weapon that killed their divine tyrant.

If I had the druid spell list? I would take Create Bonfire, and I would take Goodberry, and I would take Create or Destroy Water, and I would pack up a sleeping bag, and I would just start walking. Where? Everywhere! What’s down that road? What’s over that hill? What’s up this river? What’s past this forest? What’s over those dunes? Let’s go see! I can’t starve. I can’t parch. I can’t freeze. I can go forever. So I’m gonna.

Honestly, the druid should be the picture of the wandering vagabond. They have everything they need. You can just walk and keep walking, wherever the wanderlust takes you. You wanna go across an ocean? You can make drinking water. Ships should pay to carry you. You wanna go across a desert? A baby druid with one level and 2 measly spell slots under their belt can still make food and a gallon of water a day for 10 people. Druids should be the explorers, the navigators, the pathfinders. They can travel endlessly, without hurting that which they pass through, the very picture of ‘leave nothing but your footprints’. They can walk the earth, stopping here or there along the way to help where they need to help, and fight what they need to fight, and then they can move on again.

Yes, some druids get tired and settle down. Circles are formed, and that’s how baby druids get their starts, finding a circle. And some areas do need a permanent circle to defend or watch over them. But I do think there should be more of a picture, more of an image, more of an option, for the druid as the wanderer, the rover, the vagabond. A pocket full of berries and a wave of a hand for some rain. Just head out and follow your feet. What could stop you?

(Particularly the Stars druid, my beloved. Could there be a better picture of a navigator? That’s where a Stars druid belongs, at the prow of a ship, or guiding their people across trackless dunes, or carrying news across vast ice fields under an endless polar night to keep tiny isolated hamlets connected. Follow the stars, follow your feet. Yes, accomplish things in the process, but the journey itself is also enough. Just walk. Go. The stars will guide you).

Sorry. In real life, so often, I just really want to see what’s down that road, or over that hill. And, like. As a druid you could just go. You have all you need from a standing start. Well. You’ll have to get clothes and good boots and shit, but you can totally feed and water yourself for completely free and regardless of natural resources out there.

Druids aren't "nature clerics" in Dungeons & Dragons; they share some of the same game mechanics with clerics, but the actual media inspirations the two classes are drawing on have very little overlap.

To the point, however, the greater part of the reason D&D druids are Like That is because they're basically Merlin (i.e., the figure from Arthurian folklore) as interpreted though a very specific pop-cultural lens. At the time that D&D was taking shape, it was often asserted by New Age writers that Merlin was a real, historical druid who was later incorporated into the Arthurian myth-cycle (a claim that's now generally regarded as false), and this idea got tangled up with popular media depictions of Merlin to produce a picture of druids almost entirely divorced from the historical reality.

Every March, the same story circulates in pagan spaces:

St. Patrick's "snakes" were Druids

Patrick was a conqueror

March 17th is a holiday celebrating the destruction of Irish paganism

The problem is that none of these points are true. Ireland never had snakes. The snake miracle was invented centuries after Patrick died. And the Christianization of Ireland looked nothing like a genocide. The "All Snakes Day" story feels meaningful, but it's built on fabrications — and pagans interested in Irish history deserve the actual record instead.

Where "All Snakes Day" Comes From

The pagan author and Druid Isaac Bonewits coined the term "All Snakes Day" and wrote songs about welcoming the "snakes" back to Ireland. Wild Hunt, 2012 The claim is that Patrick's "snakes" were actually Druids, making his legendary snake-banishing a stand-in for pagan persecution. The idea spread through neopagan communities online in the 2000s and 2010s and became a seasonal staple.

Bonewits was the founder of Ár nDraíocht Féin and a well-known figure in American paganism, which helped give the story credibility in some circles.

Ireland Never Had Snakes

The most basic problem with the All Snakes Day story: there are no snakes in Ireland's fossil record at all.

Ireland's land bridge to Britain closed around 8,500 years ago as glaciers melted after the last Ice Age. Snakes hadn't reached Ireland before the sea cut the connection. Popular Science, 2024 Nigel Monaghan, keeper of natural history at the National Museum of Ireland, reviewed the fossil record and put it plainly: "At no time has there ever been any suggestion of snakes in Ireland — nothing for St. Patrick to banish." National Geographic

In fact, writers were already noting Ireland's lack of snakes before Patrick was even born. The Roman author Solinus recorded it in the 3rd century CE. Science Musings Patrick had nothing to do with it.

The Snake Miracle Was Added Centuries Later

Patrick's earliest biographies were written in the 7th century, about 200 years after his death. The snake miracle appears in none of them.

The story first shows up in the 11th century. A more well-known version was written by Jocelin of Furness in the 12th century. Ireland's Folklore and Traditions

Celtic Reconstructionist scholar P. Sufenas Virius Lupus said in 2012:

The hagiographies of St. Patrick did not include this particular 'miracle' until quite late, relatively speaking — his earliest hagiographies are from the 7th century, whereas this incident doesn't turn up in any of them until the 11th century. Wild Hunt, 2012

There's also a logic problem with the "Druids as snakes" reading. The 7th century biographies by Muirchú and Tírechán have Patrick fighting Druids constantly. He fights them openly, with earthquakes, curses, and skull-crushing. Wikipedia: Muirchú moccu Machtheni If later writers wanted to describe a purge of Druids, they had no reason to suddenly become cryptic. It had already been said plainly.

The earliest anyone proposed that snakes meant Druids was W.Y. Evans-Wentz in Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries (1911) and even he called it personal speculation. Morgan Daimler, reviewing the text, described the logic as "faulty." Living Liminally

What the Conversion of Ireland Actually Looked Like

Christianity was already in Ireland before Patrick arrived.

In 431 CE, Pope Celestine sent a bishop named Palladius to Ireland as the "first bishop to the Scotti believing in Christ." The wording matters: you don't send a bishop to a community that doesn't exist yet. There were already Christians there. Prosper of Aquitaine, Chronicon, 431 CE, via Wikipedia: Palladius Britannica History Ireland

The real Patrick was, in his own telling, enslaved in Ireland as a teenager, escaped, and came back as a missionary. His own writing describes beatings, robbery, and real doubt about whether his work had any lasting effect. Strange Horizons / Bridgette Da Silva Living Liminally He was not a conqueror, and his writings are still readable today at confession.ie.

The druid-fighting warrior version of Patrick came from Muirchú's 7th century Vita Sancti Patricii, written about 200 years after Patrick's death. It had a clear political goal: promoting the Armagh church's claim to lead all of Irish Christianity. Wikipedia: Muirchú Strange Horizons It's church propaganda, not a historical record.

Ireland stayed mostly pagan for eight or nine generations after Patrick died. Living Liminally, citing Da Silva Druids kept working as folk magicians and diviners. Irish law texts from the 7th and 8th centuries CE still describe druids (draoithe) as active in society. Wikipedia: Druid Some joined the Christian clergy as that became the new intellectual class. Strange Horizons, citing Peter Berresford Ellis

Pagan beliefs didn't die. They blended. Samhain became All Saints' Day. Brigid's feast overlapped with Imbolc. Belief in the fairy folk was still alive when Irish schoolchildren recorded local folklore from older community members in the 1930s that is now accessible on Dúchas.ie.

This conversion was a slow process that took centuries. It was not a genocide. There is no historical evidence of a violent purge of Druids.

Why the Myth Keeps Circulating

The "pagan survival" idea — that modern paganism descends from an unbroken pre-Christian lineage that survived persecution — is emotionally appealing but historically weak. Ronald Hutton's Triumph of the Moon (Oxford University Press, 1999) showed that modern pagan witchcraft is a new religious movement, not an ancient survival. The claimed ancient roots are mostly Victorian and 20th-century inventions. All Snakes Day fits this pattern: a modern story that feels like recovered history.

The genocide framing also gives communities a shared story of persecution and a sense of historical roots. But it's not a good reason to accept bad history.

The story also gets used as a simple argument against Catholicism and Christianity, turning a complex religious shift into a villain story. That doesn't help anyone who actually wants to understand Ireland.

These myths ends up hurting Irish and Irish diaspora communities trying to connect with real heritage. The people most drawn to the story often end up with invented history instead of the real thing.

What to Do Instead

The impulse behind All Snakes Day is not the problem. Celebrating pre-Christian Irish culture, honoring Ireland's traditions before Christianity, wearing a snake pin — none of that needs a fake genocide behind it.

The Henge of Keltria offers a "Feast of Age" as a March 17th alternative: a community celebration not built on invented history. The Witching Path

Better still: learn what Irish people actually did on St. Patrick's Day. The Dúchas Schools' Collection — a collection of folklore recorded by Irish schoolchildren in the late 1930s — documents the real customs: the shamrock's religious meaning, the "drowning the shamrock" drinking tradition, St. Patrick's Cross worn by women and children, the sally stick carried for household protection, holy well patterns, and farming markers tied to the agricultural year. All those traditions are covered in my next article.

You can also critique the plastic Paddy commercialization, the green beer, the novelty hats, the way Irish-American culture rebuilt the holiday, without inventing victims to make the point.